


On an Ordinary Day

by orphan_account



Category: NSYNC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-10
Updated: 2010-03-10
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin and JC, idyllic, for the most part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On an Ordinary Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaelie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Kaelie).



Everything can be reduced to math, even something like love and happiness. It's a more complicated math though, with factors and multiplications and subtractions that don't make much sense.

However, it will make sense to JC in seven days. He will do numbers in his head as he's composing, the rhythm keeping beat with the numbers trickling in his head. Three years. It will seem like an infinite amount of kisses. Five cars, three houses. To date, around thirty orgasms that were somehow better than usual, when he and Justin just connected on levels they didn't know they had. Lots of arguing and bickering. Five big fights, two where they both yelled at the top of their lungs, one where JC cried, one where Justin cried and one that hurt so much that the only thing they both could do was stay quiet.

He will come to a conclusion that there have been more good times than bad. Wine will be opened and enjoyed, even by Justin. The day will be marked as an occasion, and they will celebrate accordingly.

It will be a beautiful day.

**Day 1**

 

It occurred to JC in a particularly mundane moment. It was high noon and he could hear Justin watching basketball in the living room. Sunlight poured through JC's windows and was reflected back by the metallic silver of the fridge. He was grabbing the chips and dip that Justin had deposited in the kitchen earlier and saw a clipping of Ann Landers that his mom made a habit of clipping wherever she went. He wondered how long that clipping had been there without him seeing it. He went closer to the fridge and read the letter about a woman who had an affair with her boss, only to realize how much she actually loved her husband.

Almost funny, the burst of realization. JC wanted romance. It was simple as that, but it became a profound realization for him when he realized that he and Justin missed a few phases that all couples went through. At least, that's what JC thought as he wandered back to his living room. Justin took the chips from JC's hands and put them on the coffee table.

"Get over here," Justin said. He grabbed JC's hand and pulled. When JC sat down, Justin's hand immediately snuck underneath JC's shirt and started rubbing gently.

JC was still wondering about romance. He knew a few things to be certain. Justin, despite his obsession with vanilla candles and rose petals, was oddly not romantic in that way. He just liked them and actually had candles and rose petals in his bedside drawer because he liked their smell.

"What about that article where you said all that shit?" Chris had asked.

"I had to say something. Ask JC. I don't do that."

JC had just smiled, but he had wanted it to be true, and had hated that he wanted vanilla candles and rose petals so badly.

Chris and Joey didn't help either, now that JC thought about it. They were deliriously in love with each other, at least as delirious as Chris let himself be. It made JC feel a little jealous because he and Justin had missed out on that. They both snuck around, feeling morbid and guilty and so incredibly good, in alternating patterns of importance. There were times in the beginning when they held hands and kissed, and it was much a show of feeling as it was of defiance. Justin's hands had held his too tightly. Meanwhile, Chris and Joey declared they were in love and came out in one smooth, quick motion, so quick that it seemed like no one had time to be shocked. The press knew nothing, but their world of people did and they either accepted it or kept their mouths shut.

JC wasn't bitter about it though, at least not anymore. He remembered Chris thanking him not too long ago in the bus.

"Seriously, thanks man," he had said, his fingers pressing on the pads of the X-Box.

"For what?" JC had asked. Justin had looked on in interest as well.

"You guys came out to family and work first man." Chris had paused the game and looked at them. "I dunno, you walked through hell. Me and Joe, we sort of knew where the traps were, how to handle things. It made it a bit easier too." He'd smiled, a slow, relaxed softening of the remaining bitterness that was a scar on his face. "Also, this doesn't have as much shock value the second time around. Johnny was like, two more are gay, gee what a surprise." Chris had made a face, sarcasm a bite in his voice.

"What did your mom say?" Justin had asked.

"She said, 'well, you are in a boy band Chris.' She freaked out of course, you idiot. But you and C, you sort of warmed us up, you know. We knew how to do things a bit differently. And thank you for that. For being brave enough to go first." Chris had turned his attention back to the game at this point and had coughed slightly.

"Hey fetus," Chris had said. "Get your ass here, I need to beat you in Halo."

Chris could be poignant in the most roundabout ways, JC thought. Justin started yelling at the TV and brought JC fully into the present. He came to a decision.

**Days 2, 3, 4 and 5**

 

Time passed quickly, JC thought, when there's a mission.

JC started leaving little love notes everywhere. He bought a stack of blue Post-its because it reminded him of Justin's eyes just a little. He left passages of poetry, snatches of songs, little ramblings here and there. He felt ridiculous, but there was always a pang in his chest whenever he did something so…unlike him. He settled on that, because he could just imagine Chris, and what Chris would say if he knew about this.

At first, Justin responded with one word messages of his own. 'Sweet', he wrote in toothpaste once on the bathroom mirror, which JC cleaned up, annoyed and touched all at the same time. That was special whitening toothpaste that had cost almost ten dollars. 'Cool' on the back of JC's original note, when JC left a sky blue Post-It with a U2 song on it that went won't you wrap the night around me?

After the first five or so, Justin didn't reply anymore and just looked at JC patiently, an odd mixture of affection and genuine perplexity on his face.

"Don't do that," JC said, when he caught Justin looking at him once.

"What?"

"Looking like that."

"Where's this coming from anyway?"

"Nowhere. Never mind," JC said, his voice sounding huffy even to his own ears.

He left a few more notes around that but he gave up on details and just posted simple declarations. He knew he was being silly, but it hurt a little, Justin being confused and laughing. He also felt like a girl, but oddly, that didn't feel as bad as he thought it would.

**Day 6**

 

One morning, he saw a legal size paper taped to the bathroom mirror with Justin's scribbling.

Sing to the tune of _Pop_, the note said.

_What's the deal with leaving these notes all about?  
You'll run out of Post-its so pretty soon it'll fade out._

 

He crumpled the piece of paper and marched to the bedroom. He threw it as hard as he could at Justin who was listening to his walkman and turned to walk out.

Justin looked up, confused at first, then started laughing. "Hey, Chris helped with that!"

JC turned around. "Chris helped you with that?" he asked in disbelief.

"He said use Pop. I dunno, it made sense then," Justin said. Justin got up, his pajama bottoms sliding low on his hips. The sun peeking through the curtains gave him an amber glow. Even after all this time, JC was still struck by how attractive Justin actually was. He left marks on Justin's chest the night before, when Justin was thrashing wildly on the bed and JC wanted to tease him a little before taking Justin in his mouth. Even those faint marks looked attractive on Justin.

"Jayce," Justin said softly, his right hand on JC's chest. "After everything we went through, we don't need what Chris and Joey are doing now. We never did."

"I know," JC said a bit wistfully. "It would have been nice though, to have something like that, something normal. They can do things we never could when we got together. Something like normal."

"I love what we have here," Justin said. His voice turned small.

JC smiled. "I do too. I guess I just wanted something I could do in front of work people, or friends or relatives. I mean, we can now like they do, but we sure wasted a lot of time, you know?"

"Like when you gave me those custom made Air Jordans?"

"Or when you got me the piano." JC paused a little before looking at Justin. "We're girls, you know that right?"

Justin chuckled before bending a little at the knee to snare JC's lips with his own. The kiss turned deep and long, moments turning into minutes when the entire world seemed compressed into a space with just the two of them, of warm flesh and heated Listerine breath, ripple of muscle and wave of hair underneath palms that seemed sensitized to the subtlest of pressures, a lick of tongue and a gentle bite of teeth.

JC broke the kiss and opened his eyes quickly, relishing the moment to come. Justin always broke out of their kiss trance last, and JC loved that moment when Justin still had his eyes closed and his kiss-bruised mouth still slightly open. JC grinned and put his hands on the sides of Justin's face, his thumbs stroking the arc of Justin's upper cheekbones.

"They're a sequel," JC said.

"Huh?"

"They're a sequel. We blazed the trail first."

"Yeah. _The Godmother, Part 2_," Justin said, his smile lingering before he turned serious. "Jayce, all Chris and Joe have that we never had was a clearer way. We have something they don't. It sorta works both ways."

"What do you mean?"

"We've already figured a lot of things out. Chris is 30. I knew when I was 19. You were what, 24? I love Chris, but I'm not jealous of that, that he figured out things so late."

JC took Justin in his arms and put his face in the crook of Justin's neck and shoulder, relishing the traces of sleep scent still on Justin. It humbled him sometimes, that Justin could be so much smarter than him.

When Lance got back, JC thought, we're all having dinner here.

**Day 7**

 

JC gave up on the romance that lived in his head. It was a rare moment for him, when he changed his mind about something he wanted. Things were different. The world was different, and JC knew he could never get the version he wanted because it was impossible.

Romance was there anyway, once JC really looked. It was in the way Justin learned to live with JC's compulsion to sleep on Justin's stomach, the way Justin walked around just in pajama bottoms riding low on his hips even on cold days because he knew JC liked that. It was in the way Justin sometimes got really lost in the moment when they kissed, when Justin lay his head on JC's shoulder in bed on some nights and murmured that what he wanted most for JC was for his producing career to really take off, "and world peace," Justin always added, which always made them laugh.

They cooked spaghetti with meatballs that night. The meatballs were too spicy, the noodles a bit stiff. When the sun set, they were still talking, kissing occasionally when they paused. Justin said that it was a good meal. Later on that night, while Justin slept peacefully, JC extracted himself from underneath Justin's warm and heavy leg and thought of a melody as numbers floated in his head, of dreamy notes that sounded infinite.

 

THE END


End file.
